My grandmother passed away peacefully on Saturday. Just as my other grandmother did four years ago this week, when I was pregnant with the twins. We will be traveling to my parents' hometown again for the services, including the funeral mass at the church where my parents were married 47 years ago. I've never actually been inside, which seems odd, given all the times I've visited that town. And save for my grandfather's second wife, who we will visit when we are there, I really have little reason to return to the town where all of my grandparents lived for all of their adult lives, where they raised my parents, and then where they lived (save the Army stint) until my mother was pregnant with me when they moved to WI. The end of an era.
My grandmother was the eldest daughter of ten (five of each), and she outlived them all save her youngest brother. She went on to have five of her own (my father was the third, though his older brother died at birth, making him the eldest son). She had a lousy marriage, or more accurately a lousy husband (and father to mine), which led to their divorce soon after my parents's marriage in the late 60s. She was a divorcee (and a devout Catholic one at that), before they were commonplace. She didn't have the benefit of an education, but she was a classy lady and is responsible for all the Frenchie I have in me. I have so many good memories of all the summer days we spent running around her perfectly kept house and yard. Love and miss you grandma.
